Today’s subject: Blue Dog Democrats and fiscally irresponsible presidents.
Today’s quote is, once again, from Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition and member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
The financial mismanagement of our country by the Bush Administration should be of concern to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion . . . No American political leadership has ever willfully and deliberately mortgaged our country to foreign interests in the manner we have witnessed over the past four years.
Snappy question never asked:
Mr. Tanner, I’d like to respectfully point out that at least one other president violated your criteria far more egregiously than Bush. It was a president who—not over four years, but in just one single action—increased our national debt by twelve full percentage points, and every single dollar of that new debt was borrowed from “foreigners.” So, if mortgaging our future to foreigners is the Blue Dog Coalition’s basis for condemning presidents to the historical dustbin of shame, you have to agree that Bush can’t even touch that kind of irresponsibility.
So here’s my question:
When you were analyzing past presidents looking for those who “willfully and deliberately mortgaged our country to foreign interests,” how could you possibly have overlooked Thomas Jefferson and his purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, financed entirely by money borrowed from foreigners?
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End note:
For what it’s worth, several historians don’t share the Blue Dogs’ apparent disdain for presidents like Thomas Jefferson who borrow money from foreigners. Reason: Those historians reject the Blue Dogs’ single-entry accounting approach of considering only the money; they use the double-entry accounting approach of also considering what we got for the money. In Jefferson’s case, they determined that what we got was well worth the money.
Here’s an example:
President Jefferson's greatest achievement, the purchase of Louisiana, was made possible only by foreign loans, which would not have been forthcoming if Hamilton had not established the credit of the United States so solidly.
—Hugh Brogan, The Penguin History of the United States of America
